Explosion at Donaldsonville plant kills one, injures five

An explosion at CF Industries plant in Donaldsonville on Friday evening left one person dead and five others injured, three of them critically, according to emergency officials.

Sydni DunnStaff Writer

An explosion at CF Industries plant in Donaldsonville on Friday evening left one person dead and five others injured, three of them critically, according to emergency officials.

A large truck at the nitrogen plant was being pressurized when the incident occurred, officials said. Ami Johnson, with the Office of Emergency Management in Ascension Parish, said the incident was contained to the plant and deputies were on the scene.

As of 8:30 p.m. Friday, plant workers remained on lockdown, said Stacey Deckwa, a Vacherie native, who had been text messaging her husband, who was working at the plant and witnessed the explosion. By 9:15 p.m., employees had been released, she said.

“I got a text message that said ‘Just had explosion. People hurt,' ” she said. “He called 20 minutes later.”

Ezra Deckwa, a certified welding inspector for Turner Industries Group who was finishing up a one-week rotation at the plant, was in a company truck about 200 feet away from the explosion.

“He said he felt the pressure of the explosion in his chest,” she said. “The truck probably saved him.” Stacey Deckwa said she never heard her husband's voice so shaky.

“He said a guy was thrown by the blast into a cement piling, and his back had lacerations and he was bleeding profusely,” she said. “That was the guy who was airlifted.”

She is thankful for her husband's safety, Stacey Deckwa said, but it still feels surreal.

“I kept thinking, ‘This can't be. They just had one yesterday,' ” she said of the explosion at the Williams Olefins plant in Geismer that killed two and injured 77. “I have so much going through my mind.”